Political freedoms and human rights recognized even in the 18th century –freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, the right to be “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” (Amendment 4), protection against double jeopardy, and the right to just compensation for private property taken for public use, trial by jury, and so on… These all go hand-in-hand with economic freedoms, and respect for private property, because political opposition is ineffective without an economic base.

This is one reason Marxists today are enthusiastic supporters of any and all measures that increase the economic power of the state –it only increases the base of state employees who are enthusiastic about the moral righteousness of the state.

That’s why they are especially exercised about government employee unions. These employees have benefited from the extortionist practice of their union bosses getting politicians to take from the taxpaying citizen and give it to them.

Dr. Lucy acbragged on video about banging his Lucy bones into a “proper” fit to comply with his“consensus” notions of “prehominid evolution”. Haeckel’s fraudulent drawings were still getting into high school biology books almost a full 100 years after they were denounced by his own institution as frauds. (I saw them in my kids’ books).

“As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from “billions and billions” to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion.”

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For some of the poor, higher food prices doesn’t hurt them, because they work at producing it or selling it, but that even oversimplifies it.

That said, over the long run, the free market has proven to be a much better manager of the production, distribution, marketing and consumption of every kind of good and service.

And, Over bot the long and the short term, with every government intervention into anything, it is an intervention that determines the winners and the losers.

Price controls on food to keep the prices down begets artificial shortages, because there is more demand than supply at the police-enforced prices. Stocks diminish or disappear before new stock arrives. Producers say “so what?” it’s not worth it to produce more. It encourages stockpiling at the earliest point of legality (like leaving crops to mature later than normal), or hoarding, which is usually made illegal by the same decree that establishes the price fixing.

BUT If food prices go up, in a free market, so does production, because now there is more profit and incentive to produce. The higher they go up, the faster the suppliers rush to get in on the profits before things stabilize again.

In the U.S. price controls are more indirect, with the exception of Nixon’s brief experiment with it. They are done through subsidies to reduce the cost to producers and the supply chain, and through regulations and taxes to increase the cost of targeted majority-decreed (51% of legislative vote or executive orders) “bad thing”.

Both eventually make things harder for the poor. Oil and gas and coal anywhere would be cheaper if rulers and regimes around the world allowed the free market to open up fields that are now banned from exploration. It even applies to coal vs. oil, as the artificial additional cost in the US of each unit of unionized labor in the mines and supply chain unions adds artificial cost and propels energy use to oil. Artificial because there are people willing to work the mines for less. (If not then what “good” is the union for the miners?)

While I was a missionary in the Dominican Republic, after a few years of seeing how prolific an environment there was for vegetation and crops almost everywhere, I was astounded that there were any people at all that didn’t have enough to eat.

That’s an oversimplification, but it summarizes a lot of it. Selfishness, people who do not consider themselves bound by the Golden Rule, results in artificial barriers in normal times and in abnormal times.

–trutherator

Matthew 7:12 ¶Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

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